• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

This document is downloaded from DR‑NTU (https://dr.ntu.edu.sg) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The human right to health & its intersection with multiculturalism Muyskens, Kathryn Lynn 2019 Muyskens, K. L. (2019). The human right to health & its intersection with multiculturalism. Doctoral thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/136751 https://doi.org/10.32657/10356/136751 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY‑NC 4.0). Downloaded on 30 Sep 2021 09:54:50 SGT THE HUMAN RIGHT TO HEALTH & ITS INTERSECTION WITH MULTICULTURALISM KATHRYN LYNN MUYSKENS SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES 2019 The Human Right to Health & Its Intersection with Multiculturalism KATHRYN LYNN MUYSKENS School of Humanities A thesis submitted to the Nanyang Technological University in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctorate in Philosophy 2019 Statement of Originality I certify that all work submitted for this thesis is my original work. I declare that no other person's work has been used without due acknowledgement. Except where it is clearly stated that I have used some of this material elsewhere, this work has not been presented by me for assessment in any other institution or University. I certify that the data collected for this project are authentic and the investigations were conducted in accordance with the ethics policies and integrity standards of Nanyang Technological University and that the research data are presented honestly and without prejudice. 26 April 2019 . …………….. Date Kathryn Lynn Muyskens Supervisor Declaration Statement I have reviewed the content of this thesis and to the best of my knowledge, it does not contain plagiarised materials. The presentation style is also consistent with what is expected of the degree awarded. To the best of my knowledge, the research and writing are those of the candidate except as acknowledged in the Author Attribution Statement. I confirm that the investigations were conducted in accordance with the ethics policies and integrity standards of Nanyang Technological University and that the research data are presented honestly and without prejudice. 27 April 2019 . Date Associate Professor Andres Carlos Luco Authorship Attribution Statement This thesis does not contain any materials from papers published in peer- reviewed journals in which I am listed as an author. 26 April 2019 . Date Kathryn Lynn Muyskens ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have helped make this project possible and enabled it to be the best it can be. First of all, I would like to thank my excellent supervisor, Dr. Andres Luco. His mentorship has been immeasurably valuable, and has allowed me to grow in ways I could not have predicted. Additionally, I would also like to thank my other thesis committee members, Professor Jonathan Wolff, and Professor Chenyang Li. Without their guidance and support, this project would never have achieved the depth or clarity it deserved. I would like to thank Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for giving me the Research Scholarship, which has supported me for the four years that it took to complete the PhD. NTU’s generous funding has allowed me to attend several conferences in my time as a graduate student, which provided me opportunities to meet other prominent scholars in the field and fostered my ability to share my research. The Philosophy Department at NTU has been an amazing home for a young scholar, and I would like to thank the other faculty and graduate students for their friendship, support, and the intellectual stimulation and support they have provided. Also, I would like to thank the examiners of this thesis for their thoughtful perspectives and insightful commentary. My work is all the better for it. To all of these people, I extend my heartfelt and sincere thanks. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ i TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................ ii SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................. iv INTRODUCTION:…………………………………………………………………………….. 1 1. CHAPTER SUMMARIES ....................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER ONE: THE CASE FOR A MULTICULTURAL HUMAN RIGHT TO HEALTH 10 1. BETWEEN THE ROCK & THE HARD PLACE: PAROCHIALIAM & RELATIVISM … 11 2. WHAT GROUNDS RIGHTS? ................................................................................................ 18 3. WHAT GROUNDS HUMAN RIGHTS? …………………………………………………… 20 4. WHAT GROUNDS THE HUMAN RIGHT TO HEALTH? ……………………………….. 24 5. CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………... 32 CHAPTER TWO: A HUMAN RIGHT TO WHAT KIND OF HEALTH? …………………. 34 1. WHAT KIND OF THEORY? ………………………………………………………………. 34 2. EXISTING PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS OF HEALTH ………………………….. 38 3. COMPONENTS OF HEALTH ……………………………………………………………... 43 4. CRITERIA FOR INADEQUACY ………………………………………………………….. 52 5. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………….... 57 CHAPTER THREE: A HUMAN RIGHT TO WHAT KIND OF HEALTHCARE?………... 58 1. DEMARCATING THE MEDICAL ……………………………………………………...… 58 2. IDENTIFYING INADEQUATE MEDICINES ……………………………………………. 63 3. ELEMENTS OF MEDICINE ………………………………………………………………. 68 4. DETERMINING EFFICACY …………………………………………………………….… 76 ii 5. EVALUATING MEDICAL SYSTEMS …………………………………………………..... 78 6. CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………….... 81 CHAPTER FOUR: FROM LIBERAL MULTICULTURALISM TO MEDICAL PLURALISM................................................................................................................................ 83 1. LIBERALISM & MULTICULTURALISM ………………………………………………... 83 2. DISCERNING RELEVANT GROUPS ………………………………………………….…. 88 3. CULTURE VS HEALTH ………………………………………………………………...…. 91 4. MEDICAL MINORITIES: CAM & LIBERAL MULTICULTURALISM ............................ 98 5. AUTONOMY & NON-HARM ……………………………………………………………. 102 6. PSEUDO-MEDICINE & BAD MEDICINE REVISITED…………………………...……..103 7. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………104 CHAPTER FIVE: INTERVENTION ON BEHALF OF HEALTH……………………..….. 106 1. THE IMPETUS FOR INTERVENTION: VIOLATION & UNMET NEEDS ……………..108 2. AIDING THE UNABLE …………………………………………………………………... 114 3. PATTERNS OF VIOLATION …………………………………………………………..… 124 4. BETWEEN CULTURE LOSS & HEALTH GAIN ……………………………………….. 128 5. CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………….. 131 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………… 133 WORKS CITED...................................................................................................................... 135 iii SUMMARY Human rights have been a popular topic in political philosophical literature. Recently, the human right to health has garnered increasing attention. Yet, the philosophical community has not adequately investigated the meaning of health and medicine, or explored how different interpretations may interact in multicultural contexts. How we define these key terms will have significant impact on how the human right to health is interpreted and how it will interact with other rights both within liberal democratic nations and in the international political realm. In this thesis, I will argue for a pluralistic definition of health and medicine. Though I argue that there is more than one valid conception of both health and medicine, there will still be some versions judged unacceptable or inadequate, thus constraining the possible acceptable expressions of health and medicine. As a whole, the thesis examines the relationships between health, culture, and political institutions. While other scholars have defended the inclusion of health in the list of human rights, the operant conception of health was under-defined. Human rights have a complicated relationship with international relations and have sometimes been accused of unjustly assuming Western values to be universal. In my thesis, I take the view that health is a universal good, but also a culturally laden concept, and thus there is a need to articulate how political bodies can respect the human right to health without perpetuating ethnocentric bias. This new understanding of health and healthcare will inevitably influence how the human right to health will be understood, and thus the later chapters of this thesis are devoted to exploring how cultural variations in health and medicine play out in domestic and international policy. I hope the arguments I make here will be useful for healthcare policy makers, humanitarian heath organizations, and medical practitioners, as well as informative for academics and lay people as to the value that health has for human well-being and its relationship with culture and identity. iv INTRODUCTION Human rights are meant to be universal, but it is sometimes asserted that, in fact, they represent a decidedly Western world view or are even tools for Western political agendas. This argument, sometimes referred to as the “parochialism” argument, is sometimes levied against human rights by ethical relativists. The argument for ethical relativism centres on the incommensurability of certain values from culture to culture. Without some common ground, there is no reason to think that we can have universal human rights. If we accept the relativist position that one culture has no basis on which to judge the practices of another,

Load more

  157

Copy Link